Was Bob Seger the original Boss?

We went to see Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band last night at the Moda Center here in Portland. We had seen the band on their last tour here a few years back and loved the show. He scheduled what was to be his last tour in 2017, but completed only 13 dates out of 32 scheduled, due to a ruptured disc that required major surgery. Most thought that he would retire at that point, but he announced last year that he would make up the dates he canceled and add more. He also said it would definitely be his last tour.

It was a great show, if a little less tight and balanced than when we last saw him. He said he would play some obscure songs, and that he did, which was fun but inevitably led to the omission of some of his many crowd favorites. The high points of the two-hour show were very high indeed and intensely emotional, and the band was professional and high-energy throughout.

About halfway through the concert, it occurred to me how similar Seger is to Springsteen, and in so many ways that I had never considered. Sure there are lots of differences, and Springsteen is a musical generation removed from Seger, who had his first national hit and album in 1968. But consider the almost eerie similarities; after following them both for decades, I never have.

First, from day one of their careers, the band has belonged to them, and not just by carrying their name. They wrote all of their respective songs, were in charge of not only the musical but also all of the business decisions. 

And there’s so much more. From a musical standpoint, they both put together bands heavily reliant on keyboards in an era when guitar was king. Both prominently featured both piano and organ on their albums and in their live performances. Strikingly, unlike almost every other band back then, both had a feature saxophonist nearly all the way back to the genesis of their careers. More subtly, neither has been hesitant to add additional players and instruments, and to feature acoustic instruments in the live environment. I have seen both bands numerous times, both in their earlier incarnations as well as in their current iterations, and last night I was struck by how visually similar they are today on stage. Both feature back up singers and horn sections on risers to the sides. Both have two full-time keyboard players and dynamic and varied rock and roll percussion that goes beyond an energetic drummer, and both have the eponymous front man who is as much a musical director on stage as he is a mere lead singer. 

Lastly, both write songs that are uniquely American and incredibly heartfelt and truly meaningful. Think of “My Hometown” and “Turn the Page,” two songs that couldn’t be more different in musical structure or subject matter, and yet mine the deep emotion and longing of quintessential American personal experience.

The last great similarity is the love the audiences show these two artists when they play live with their bands. There is plenty of fan-love to be seen at concerts, but the love I feel at a Stones or a U2 concert is a kind of hero-worship or “aspirational love” if you will. With Seger and Springsteen it is intense and personal, and make no mistake, it is love.

Maybe Bob was really the original Boss …

Portland, Oregon
February 3, 2019

Dylan Wins the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature

And it's for writing poetic lyrics like these, from the 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. It's nearly impossible for me to pick a favorite Dylan lyric, but this just might be it!

 "Visions of Johanna"

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet ?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise she's all right she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
Oh, how can I explain ?
It's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna they kept me up past the dawn.

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower frieze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees."
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
Saying, "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him."
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya man."

As she, herself prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes everything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play, the skeleton keys of the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.